Emboss Painting on a velvet cloth

Painting is something that has, is and will always be my cling on! For me, when words and actions have failed to do justice, my paint brush has always come to the rescue 🙂 Well, I recently got hold of pictures of quite a few of my paintings and art work that I have created since childhood so I have a number of painting related posts lined up in the queue. I have been painting on various mediums since childhood, and in this post I am going to talk about emboss painting.

Emboss painting is basically carving a design on a surface such that it appears to be raised. It can be done on harder surfaces like an aluminium foil or softer and more flexible surfaces like a cloth. Emboss painting on a velvet cloth is not too hard to get started with. All you need is a velvet cloth, embossing powder, fabric paint (with shimmer) and a paint brush. Here’s a quick 3 step process of creating an emboss painting.

Step 1: The first step is to mix embossing powder with white paint and then carve the design on to the velvet cloth. You can find mixing proportions with the embossing powder kit.Step 2: Once the design has dried, reverse the velvet cloth and iron it evenly over the design. You should start seeing the entire white design rise up.Step 3: Apply fabric paint with shimmer to the white raised design and your emboss painting is ready. Easy, right?

Emboss painting on velvet cloth

If you don’t want to go through the pain of carving the embossed design, but still want to create your own embossed painting, buy one of those readily available kits. All you need to do with those kits is iron the cloth and paint the embellished design!

A few tips on emboss painting: Don’t use a regular brush to create the emboss design. A plastic brush would be a good choice. Lay a wet cloth on the reverse of the velvet cloth before ironing to get a good impression of the design. Mixing proportions for the embossing powder and white paint are very important else the entire painting will not rise properly, so follow the mixing measurements diligently. And last but not least, use fabric paint with shimmer for a great effect.

i usually follow the directions on the emboss color box. There are easy to use assembled kits, in which you don’t have to combine water and powder, rather you can just apply the paint to the cloth and then iron it to get the embossing effect.

Pratibha, ironing after applying the paint depends on the quality of paint being used. Some paints don’t do well when heat is applied. If you don’t like the colors with the ready to use kit, you can buy them separately and use shading. Good luck 🙂